Diamond catalyst shows promise in breaching age-old barrier
Sunday, June 30, 2013 - 14:30
in Physics & Chemistry
In the world, there are a lot of small molecules people would like to get rid of, or at least convert to something useful. Think carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most responsible for far-reaching effects on global climate. Nitrogen is another ubiquitous small-molecule gas that can be transformed into the valuable agricultural fertilizer ammonia. Plants perform the chemical reduction of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia as a matter of course, but for humans to do that in an industrial setting, a necessity for modern agriculture, requires subjecting nitrogen to massive amounts of energy under high pressure. Now a new method may make a big difference.